Thanks to all of you for reading; thanks to Anni and Lauren for the beta.
The first time he saw
Sara Sidle, he didn't know who she was. She was sprawled rather
unceremoniously beneath a large maple tree in a terrible tie-dye
shirt. . Really, she stretched forever and he wondered how tall she
was, just to wonder.
She had a ripe, large dandelion between her fingers. Spinning it slowly, in time with the breeze, her head was buried in a book. The book was tattered and just to humor his inquisitive mind, he wondered if she had made it that way or if it was a borrowed book. Too old to be a student and too young to be a professor, she intrigued him. He glanced at her once, twice and then mounted the stairs to the lecture hall.
He turned back; she was mouthing something, still twirling that dandelion, interested in nothing but the text before her.
The younger Gil Grissom smiled and pressed through the door.
For some reason, he wasn't at all surprised when she had seated herself right before him, all business, that yellow weed tucked between the pages of her text. A thumbnail between her teeth and eyes focused on an anonymous page, he found himself even more captured.
When she asked her first question he was lost; though he didn't know it, he was at the exposition of the long road on which he would take to fall ever-completely in love.
The second sighting was on a last-minute consultation on the Bay. The decomp was particularly bad, piquing even his scent receptors. Dank and dreary, rain pelted his head as he stepped from the overpriced rental car onto the crumbling gravel.
She was looking down at a clipboard, a slicker's hood obscuring her vision. "All we know is the vic's female, more insect activity than we know how-"
Brown met cloudy gray and she smiled wider than he'd seen in ages. "Gil!" He liked to think that if she hadn't had a clipboard in her hands she would have thrown her arms around him in a manner of greeting. The young woman filled him in on all of the pertinent information of the case, leaving gaps where she knew he would expand upon.
They kissed for the first time that evening, something sloppy and impromptu with many other people looking on. They laughed afterwards with his arm around her shoulder, holding her gently against his side. They laughed, laughed like the kiss had meant nothing.
And he brought her back to his hotel room like she had meant something. She had meant something up to the moment he had brought his lips almost to hers and then had pulled abruptly away. There was coffee and discussion and arguments and brushing of hands. There had been cowardice on his part. There had been a shared sense of being overwhelmed when they said goodnight, when neither one could bring themselves to part with a kiss.
The third time they'd laid eyes on the other she'd been hideous and he'd been too old. The heat didn't agree with her and science just barely agreed with him. Test dummies under blaspheming Vegas sun; when she pulled off her sunglass he remembered all the reasons he wanted her. But he also reminded himself of all the reasons it would be terribly wrong.
She was from the Bay and couldn't take the heat.
Hows and whys and he'd been floored to find that she'd become even skinnier. Was it because of him? He'd had no time to dissect because she was quick to jump to science and rational. A safe place.
That was when the tables turned. He began folding in upon himself and she began to blossom.
The way he saw Sara now was entirely different. She was blue; the light pushing through his drapes was draped across her body, giving her an ethereal glow. It was only an hour before that she had fallen asleep after pressing her lips to his once more and turning away.
Two martinis hadn't been enough to render either one of them inebriated and that he was glad for. Grissom was reassured to know that she was sober and happy when he took her to bed, gently plying her with slick kisses and whispered words of affection.
The second his fingers had touched the skin which lay beneath her clothes, she'd become a silhouette of herself;
Sara moved so fast, moaned so loud, cursed so profusely that he wondered if he'd be able to keep up with her. Lips attacked his neck, his cheek, ear, nose, stomach and then he too was moaning just as loudly as she was.
She was skinnier than he had realized, though her skin was softer than he'd ever imagined; he was wider that she had taken notice of, but he was more romantic and attentive than she ever thought possible.
Foreplay had dragged on for nearly an hour; when he'd moved to enter her he was shocked at how slick, how tight, how perfect she felt. At that moment she'd surprised him with "Ohohohshitnevergoingbackeverrrrrr..." and had kissed him harder than she had previous.
That was when Grissom found himself drowning and he didn't much care, because Sara was drowning too.
He leaned back on one arm and peeled the sheet down her back and let it rest at her hip. There was perfection in the line of her spine, and he allowed his eyes to linger on the dip just above her ass. Slowly, he traced the notches beneath the skin with index and middle finger, listening to her sigh in her sleep as he did so.
His ears lingered on the sound of her breathing and wondered what kind of peace he was wading through. Turning his hand, he allowed his fingernails to trace down her spine; once reaching her bottom he traced back upwards with his fingertips. There was a slick hiss as his nails dragged down her skin and he closed his eyes, listening to her breathing hitch, feeling her press back into his touch.
Stilling for a moment, she took in her surroundings, the quiet of the morning. She was awaking to morning and to Grissom and it was intensely odd, confusing and fantastic. A yawn escaped her throat and she turned onto her back; no point in staving off the inevitable confrontation and awkward silence that accompanied sleeping together.
But what she was met with was not at all what she expected. A tender mask had seeped into his face and he lay there simply watching her. When she quirked a brow he allowed a lazy smile to touch his lip and his right hand to tuck a piece of hair behind her ear. "You make a wonderful bedfellow," he breathed and leaned back to watch her some more.
Sara smirked and sank into the pillow with a dramatic heave. "I was supposed to make this hard for you," she whined and pressed her hands over her eyes.
"You did make it hard," he quipped, the smile he wore on his face dripping from his lewd words. One of Sara's hands pulled away and smacked him on the arm and he laughed, reaching out quickly to grab it and kiss her wrist. "But seriously, this is going to make things monumentally more difficult for me..."
Sara peeled her other hand away and glanced at him from her position on the pillow. "What do you mean?"
"Hmmm," he hummed, settling himself back down on the bed and laying so that they were face to face. "Not touching you when I want to, keeping thoughts of you like this out of my head... things like that." A hand snaked to her hip beneath the sheet.
"Things like that, huh?" She leaned in and kissed him delicately, turning it sloppy when they both began to laugh. Her top lip remained pressed to his bottom one as she slid away, back to the pillow. "Things like that..." she sighed and closed her eyes, drawing the sheet up over her shoulder. "Mmmm, but I gotta get up soon if I'm going to make it to my book club meeting." Sara shoved the sheet off of her, exposing her bare chest and stomach.
Grissom leaned in with a grin, "You can be late." He pecked her shoulder and Sara fell back onto the bed.
Sara squirmed, "No, no I can't be late."
Chuckling, he placed a kiss on her exposed throat. "Sure you can," he goaded, leaning onto her lightly.
Sara sighed and allowed her fingers to twine in the damp hair of his nape, "Sure I can," and she gave in, just like that.
